Press Releases Archive

Restore administration in AP, Appeals Lok Satta

The Lok Satta Party charged today that administration in Andhra Pradesh has come to a standstill because of factional feuds and clashes among ruling party groups.

“Tearing away banners carrying Mrs. Sonia Gandhi’s pictures and thwarting membership drives may be internal affairs of the Congress but not the burning of buses, destruction of public property and disruption of zilla parishad meetings”, said party leaders Katari Srinivsa Rao and P. Ravi Maruth.

Talking to the media, the Lok Satta leaders pointed out that most farmers reeled under the drought while those who reaped harvests were worried over remunerative prices for their produce. Ever spiraling prices of essential commodities and the fast spread of communicable diseases are plaguing people all over the State. Yet even senior leaders of the ruling party continued to remain indifferent to people’s problems.

“How could administration be carried on when Ministers and MLAs threatened to resign?”, they asked and said that most of those in the ruling party did not bother to visit their constituents to address their problems.

The Lok Satta leaders demanded that the national leadership of the ruling party intervene and help restore administration in Andhra Pradesh not deeming it as an internal affair of the party. How could it allow administration to come to a standstill in a State which according to the annual budget spending Rs.283 crore a day? They also wanted all those who indulged in vandalism as part of group clashes to be brought to book so that such events did not recur.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - 16:45

Lok Satta seeks pledge loans to farmers

The Lok Satta Party today expressed the fear that paddy growers faced the prospect of exploitation by middlemen and rice millers as the Food Corporation of India with its warehouses overflowing was in no position to take up paddy/rice procurement immediately after the crop comes into the market in about a month.

Talking to the media, State party Secretary P. Bhaskara Rao and spokesman V. Laxman Balaji said that small and marginal farmers traditionally sold their crop immediately after harvest as they cannot afford to wait for a better price.

To save such farmers from exploitation by rice millers and their middlemen, the Lok Satta Party suggested that banks give pledge loans to farmers on their stocks. Such paddy could be sealed at the farmer’s residence itself or stored at a common point in a village and taken as mortgage, they suggested. Such farmers could sell their crop when they received a better price in the market and clear their pledge loans.

The party also suggested that grain banks be established in villages under the control of local governments so that money need not be wasted on transport of rice/paddy procured in rural to urban areas where the warehouses are located and back to villages for distribution of rice through the public distribution system. Such a decentralized system of storage and distribution would result in enormous savings for the public exchequer and eliminate wastage and corruption prevalent in a centralized system.

Saturday, September 26, 2009 - 18:15

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